Desperate measures near Bastogne
A Rotarian tells the story of a besieged city and its heroic healing angels
On 19 December 1944, in the small Belgian town of Noville, U.S. troops struggle to hold back Nazi forces advancing on Bastogne. As casualties mount, Captain Jack Prior, a 1943 graduate of the University of Vermont’s College of Medicine, cares for wounded soldiers inside a tavern under siege.
Jack is on his hands and knees treating a soldier with a sucking chest wound, grimacing in sympathy with every shout of pain he hears in the tavern. He packs off the wound to stop the bubbling flow of blood and binds the man’s chest tightly. Once satisfied the soldier can breathe, Jack looks quickly around the tavern. The air is thick with dust shaken loose by the impact of artillery and tank shells landing nearby. The floor is covered with casualties. The most severely wounded line the wall, the best shelter the structure offers. Sarge has a badly damaged arm in a sling but is feeling no pain thanks to a dose of morphine. As he slumps against the bar, he gives a running account of the battle. With few able to hear Sarge over the cacophony, a wounded soldier lying next to him makes up an audience of one. Sarge is especially impressed with the paratroopers.
“You shoulda seen ’em. Came through town on a dead run. Straight up the hill at those Nazi bastards.”
“Whaddaya talkin’ about?”
“Airborne! You know those crazy guys who jump outa airplanes!”
Image credit: Matt Huynh
The door is shouldered open, and a medic from the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment enters the pub weighed down by a sagging, wounded comrade. Once he situates the stricken soldier, he sets to work improving on his hasty field dressing. It is a particularly bloody wound, but the medic clearly has the temperament for the job. When he finishes, he takes a quick look around the room at casualties who are multiplying by the minute. While bullets drum the outside of the building and whine away in ricochet, the medic crawls over to Jack, who is taken aback by how cheerful the young man seems in the middle of complete chaos.
“Looks like you could use some help, Captain.”
“Sure could. We have our hands full.”
“I’m afraid there’s gonna be a lot more. Our boys caught hell movin’ up the hill. They’re fallin’ back now.”
Shouting and commotion outside precede the arrival of more wounded troopers and Jack’s aides somehow find spaces for all of them. Suddenly, shuttered windows at the back end of the building are struck and shattered, raining shards and splinters upon the wounded. It is an ominous development, indicating that the Germans are working their way around behind the village.
“Block that window!”
As though propelled by powerful springs, Wallington and Beagle jump to the task and shove the heavy cabinet in front of the window. An instant later, the cabinet is rocked by the jagged shrapnel of another near miss, shredding and blasting Jack’s stores of medical supplies throughout the tavern. Thankful that the cabinet absorbed the blast, Jack is dismayed by yet another crisis. He will soon be short of wraps and bandages. Yet, as he watches the medic go from man to man, rendering the best care possible under the circumstances, and doing so in almost a cheerful manner, Jack finds his balance once again. He resolves to not convey discouragement and shouts to his aides.
“Salvage what you can!”
The sound of a vehicle lurching up to the building signals the arrival of an ambulance. When the driver appears in the doorway with a pair of litters, Jack is relieved and quickly selects two of his wounded who require more intensive care than he can provide.
“OK, evacuate these two first.”
The medic and Jack’s aides join the driver as they heft the two men and carry them to the doorway. When Jack opens the door for them, the ambulance takes a direct hit and bursts into flames. Lost in the fire are a dozen litters stacked in the rear of the vehicle. As the tires begin to burn and belch black smoke, the men retreat into the tavern, and Jack slams the door shut to block the noxious fumes. The driver is in mourning. He’s had that ambulance since the day the 10th Armored Division landed in France.
“What are we gonna do now, Captain? That’s all the litters.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Excerpted from Angels of Bastogne: A Remembrance of World War II by Glenn H. Ivers. Published by Peace Corps Writers.
Winged victory
Portentous rewards await in Bastogne — if the author can find his way there
In 2014, my wife, Laura, and I traveled to Paris. Once there, we rented a car and headed to Bastogne, the Belgian city heroically defended by U.S. forces in 1944. By that time, I had completed a first draft for a movie tentatively entitled Angels of Bastogne, but I felt a need to walk the ground trod 70 years earlier by Dr. Jack Prior, who had first told me the story of that city under siege.
Image credit: Annika Huett
Relying on an old (and, ultimately, unhelpful) Michelin map of France and the Low Countries, I planned to follow the route of the 101st Airborne through the fortress city of Sedan and on to Bastogne. I stubbornly declined Laura’s suggestion that we follow Google Maps.
We crossed the River Meuse, and as we rolled though the Ardennes, our sunny day was quickly enveloped in fog — and we lost our way. I relied on my minimal French to ask various people for directions and glean what I could from their responses. As darkness fell, I found to my dismay that we had ended up on country roads where clods of muck and cow manure thumped the undercarriage of the car.
Finally, just after midnight, our secondary road joined a main road that led into Bastogne. After checking into our hotel, we craved a well-deserved beer. We stepped back outside and made our way toward some neon lights near the far corner of the square. Along the way we passed dozens of stern patriarchal statues and a solitary smiling angel. We took it as a very good omen.
The bright lights turned out to be Le Nut’s, a brasserie named after the famous one-word response — “Nuts!” — given by General Anthony McAuliffe to the German ultimatum for U.S. troops to surrender during the siege of Bastogne. Inside, we found the walls covered with photos, postcards, and letters from veterans who had visited the tavern over the years.
When we returned to our hotel at such a late hour, we expected the square to be asleep. We found instead a dozen young men playfully teasing a fellow trying to start his moped. We were astonished to see that the fellow wore a giant pair of angel wings and a T-shirt that was hand-lettered “Hell’s Angel,” with the word “Hell’s” crossed out.
The angel finally got his moped started and took off, followed by his mates sprinting and laughing behind him. When they rounded a corner, the night went as silent as an ancient battlefield. Another smiling angel, another good omen.